AHS Congratulates AeroVelo for Human Powered Helicopter First Flight!

The AeroVelo Atlas human powered helicopter made its first flight on Tuesday August 28, 2012, as part of the AHS Igor I. Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition. Check out the video on our YouTube Channel and find out more about the AHS HPH competition at www.vtol.org/hph.

As described previously in AHS’s Vertiflitemagazine, AeroVelo is a collection of students and
professionals working on lightweight, efficient designs; core members of the
team began in 2006 with the founding of the Human-Powered Vehicle Design Team
at the University of Toronto.

AeroVelo is led by Dr. Todd Reichert and
Cameron Robertson, both graduates of Toronto. In August 2010, AeroVelo’s first project
made aviation history by achieving the age-old dream of bird-like flight – the
world’s first human-powered ornithopter, the Snowbird. The team then focused on
the design of highspeed streamlined bicycles. In 2011, AeroVelo smashed the
college land speed record by traveling 72.6 mph (116.9 km/hr) at the
Human-Powered Speed Challenge in Battle Mountain, Nevada.

AeroVelo is now focused on the AHS HPH Competition. Dr.
Reichert is the project manager and pilot, and Cameron Robertson is the chief structural
designer. The project team has made extensive use of multidisciplinary optimization,
with the main design code written by Reichert and Robertson. Their Atlas design
is also a cruciform quadrotor design, based on Yuri-1. It is being designed and
constructed at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Tottenham, Ontario, just outside
of Toronto. AeroVelo recently ran a successful fundraising campaign on Kickstarter.com,
and has been primarily supported by corporate sponsors, research grants and
individual donors. Preliminary design and analysis for Atlas began in late
2011, with the focused design begun in January. Construction was begun in May.

AHS congratulates the AeroVelo on becoming the third active
HPH competitor to fly!